Acknowledging and Building: Principled Discursive Moves in Coaching Conversations (Poster 9)

• In Event: Expanding Coaching and Representations to Support Teacher Sense-Making Toward Disrupting Inequitable Mathematics Teaching Practices

Abstract

Objectives: Discursive markers of tensions in establishing trust between teachers and teacher educators within professional learning environments have practical implications for practice working with teachers and teacher educators. However, these practices do not fully address the complex nuances of building trust within professional learning environments. To account for the moment-to-moment improvisational interactions that happen in and around professional learning practices, this analysis focused how coaches were acknowledging and building upon what teachers were saying/doing within coaching conversations and classroom practice, that as a means of developing trust within the relationship and supporting/improving instructional practices.

Theoretical Perspectives: Instructional coaches’ ability to develop working relationships with teachers is of crucial importance to building trust within a coaching conversation (e.g., Duffy, 1994; Rice, 2002). Without a trusting professional learning relationship, establishing shared visions for working together, or identifying and negotiating instructional improvement goals (e.g., Author & Colleague, under review; Baumfield & Butterworth, 2007). Articulation of specific tensions in discourse between teacher educators and teachers while negotiating shared understanding and trust (Author, Colleague, & Colleague, 2020) further highlights the risks of putting historically dehumanized students in inequitable mathematics learning experiences. Addressing the improvisational interactions that happen in and around instructional practices shows promise in supporting such a relational, identity-affirming, conception of learning (Nasir, 2011; Rogoff, Turkanis, & Bartlett, 2001). Improvisation affords for making connections, building trust, justifying the unexpected, and reaching deeper levels of response (Halpern, Close, & Johnson, 1994; Spolin, 1983).

Methods and Data Sources: Drawing on theories and methods from improvisational theater (Johnstone, 2012), activities associated with acknowledging and building were introduced to a community of mathematics instructional coach learners. These activities were part of a principle-based design focused on coaches as learners and researchers, specifically aimed to support learning in one-to-one coaching conversations. To understand coach learning, coaching conversations were coded (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2018) to look for shifts how the coaches were acknowledging and building on what teachers were saying in order to identify and negotiate instructional improvement goals together.

Results: These results focus specifically on the story of one coach. Analysis indicates that the instructional coach displayed may different ways to acknowledge teacher practice from multiple time points as a means to build relationship, address content, or both. They also had a consistent timely way of attending to the needs of students, keeping the purpose of the work focused on student learning, as opposed to individual teacher tensions or systemic mandates.

Significance and Implications: The affordances of teaching practices positioned as equity-oriented within mathematics education can also be applied and studied in teacher, and teacher leader, professional learning spaces. In this case, design principles derived from Ambitious Teaching (Kazemi, Franke, & Lampert, 2009) showed up in how improvised discourse in coaching conversations shifted overtime, which has implications for further conceptual development of Ambitious Coaching. There is a continued need to engage in principle-driven means of interacting within professional learning spaces that account for the moment-to-moment improvisational interactions in and around professional learning practices aimed toward re-humanizing mathematics learning.

Author

• Ashley D. Scroggins, University of Colorado - Boulder
  Presenting Author